A great military leader, a renowned statesman, a man of
extraordinary destiny, Napoleon Bonaparte quit the stage of history
in July 1815.
But for six more years the man who had outlived his glory
dragged out an existence on a rocky island lost in the ocean. It
was a long-drawn-out agony of a prisoner doomed to slow
death. The British Government on whose generosity Napoleon
had counted, did not live up to his expectations. It kept him
under a petty, captious surveillance that poisoned the last years
of his life. The courage and fortitude he displayed in those long
days of trials and tribulations have made one forget many of his
former crimes.
At a distance of one hundred and fifty or one hundred and
eighty years the voices of an epoch gone by are somewhat
muted. But on the other hand a historian restoring a picture of a
bygone era and its heroes and villains is already free from the
partialities and prejudices of the time he depicts. Measured by
the unbending yardstick of time, the historical events and figures
can be seen in perspective for history allots everybody their
proper place.
Seen from this remote distance, Napoleon Bonaparte
appears as a most contradictory figure indeed. We view him, first
and foremost, as the son of his time, a time of change, when the
old feudal system was fading away and a new bourgeois society
was emerging (was coming up to take its place). One associates
his name with tyranny, cruel bloody wars and an insatiable lust
for new conquests.
It will be probably correct to say that Napoleon Bonaparte
was one of the most outstanding representatives of the bourgeoisie
when it was still a young, brave, rising class and that it
was he who most fully epitomized all the strong points it had
then, as well as all the flaws peculiar to it even at that early
stage.
As long as progressive elements predominated in
Napoleon’s activities, his good fortune held and he won one
victory after another. But when his wars turned into purely
aggressive, imperialist ones bringing the peoples of Europe
nothing but subjugation and oppression, neither his personal
talents nor the tremendous efforts he took could ensure victory.
Nothing could avert the collapse of his empire and his
own downfall. Both his rise and his fall were quite in the order
of things.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of his time and his image is an
epitome of its features. All the bourgeois politicians who came
after him and tried to step into his shoes kept degenerating into a
travesty or caricature of the man they endeavoured to imitate.
It is utterly impossible to strike Napoleon’s name offthe
annals. In 1968 his bicentennial was marked involving hundreds
of books and articles, a great number of congresses,
conferences, TV shows - and more disputes. The public interest
in Napoleon as a man, a military leader and a statesman is
still keen.
So what do people continue to dispute about? Some disparage
and curse Bonaparte, others sing his praises, still others try
hard to explain the contradictions of his career so unlike all others.
But no matter how diverse the opinions may be, everybody
agrees that he was a man of a unique, astonishing destiny
impressed forever on the memory of mankind.